Innocence Is So Overrated / Are you not scarred for life? Isn't everyone? What's more, isn't that how it should be?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Published
4:00 am PST, Wednesday, March 7, 2007

We seem to have this bizarre notion. We seem to suck on this freakish and ill-begotten idea like it was some sort of sticky candy cane of bitter, irrefutable truth.

It's about innocence. It's this sincere, fantastical idea that we are born pure and simple and clean like bright happy cotton balls and then we somehow quickly become horribly corrupted by the icky Satan-ruled world, and it's all we can do to stumble our way through and not get too soiled and damaged and emotionally shredded before finally wheezing our last emphysemic breath and saying, Well, at least I never became a seething Republican or a secretly gay evangelical or a rabid Celine Dion fan, and then clicking off.

Take sex. Take a lot of sex. Take lots and lots of wet dangerous imperfect sex and mix it liberally with hyperactive religious piety and conservative sanctimony and wanton Christian hypocrisy and you've probably got the greatest recipe for our culture's devout belief in the inevitable corruption of innocence of all time.

See, there was a study. A recent report about teen sex (yes, a new one emerges roughly every nine seconds) concluded that any sexual encounter teenagers endure, from oral to anal to upside-down to groping each other's nether regions through some nicely faded True Religions, any sexual encounter could cause emotional damage to your otherwise perky, cherubic teenager.

That's right. They say sex of any kind can harm teens emotionally. Even permanently. The researchers go on to say -- in that sort of nicely patronizing, obvious way that scientists are wont to indulge in -- that this means it's extra-important for parents to inform their kids of what sex can do, what it contains and what it wants and what it whispers in your ear late at night when the flesh is trembling and the thoughts are scalding and the guilt is ominous.

This is where it gets interesting. This is where it gets confusing. This is where you go, Wait wait wait, something is just not right here. Are we not missing some essential truth? Something core and vital and deeply human? I think we are.

Perhaps it's this: There is simply no such thing as an authentic human experience that doesn't somehow and in some way affect, stain, taint or scar the human animal. It cannot be avoided. It cannot be shunned or quieted or talked off the ledge. This is, in fact, what we do.

In other words, there is no such thing as a perfectly innocent life, or childhood, or experience, no such thing as strolling through this world wholly sheltered from, say, everyday trauma, abused puppies, shocking imagery, bad sex or inappropriate fondling or confusing orgasms, and if you insist that there is or that there should be or that this is the way God intended it, it is quite likely you are one violently oversheltered home-schooled virgin and now might be a good time to read a book and buy a vibrator and head into therapy very soon and I can say that without fear of reprisal because, well, you are not reading this column anyway.

Let's flip it around: There is no human child on the face of the earth who has had some sort of ideally perfect, sex-free, trauma-free, drama-less life by which we should measure all our failures and woes. There is no standard, no perfect score, no idyllic model. And there never was. It's the equivalent of arguing that we are meant to go through the modern world free of raw flesh and sticky blood and parasites, ever struggling to remain clean and pure, when in fact this is the stuff of which we are made. Bacteria and spit and germs? Baby, it's what we are.

The notion of "pure" innocence invites one of two perspectives: One is the aforementioned cheerless Christian view, an all-too-common attitude that implies that human life is mostly pain and suffering and forbidden, guilt-ridden midnight masturbation interspersed with slivers of blind faith, and we are here to endure Satan's nasty trials until armies of happy dopey angels come and lead us into the giant Blue Light special in the sky. Familiar? Sure is. Hell, even the president believes it.

The second perspective goes something like this: Drama is what we are designed for. Emotional (and physical, and spiritual) scarring and discoloration is, in a way, what we do. Our spirits are, after all, here to experience and taste and immerse in it all.

But it's when you deny this fact, when you choose to see all the sex and drugs and tattoos and mortgages as a giant drawer of scary sharp knives that the gods sigh and frown and say, Well, why in the hell did we set up this mad gorgeous kitchen for you in the first place if you're not going to slice off the tip of your finger now and then, and scream, and get a bandage and heal awkwardly and then do it all over again?

Is this not what it's all about? The wise ones, the gurus and mystics and the energy readers, they will tell you that unless you're the Dalai Lama or a Bodhisattva or some rare precious otherworldly creature who's already essentially transcended this plane but who's decided to hang around to show the rest of us how to untie those wicked knots of divine misunderstanding, most of us are here to learn some very particular lessons, perhaps over and over again, until we get it.

And each time we return, it's to pick up something we didn't get the last time, be it through pain or suffering or unutterable joy or clumsy sex or trauma or a wicked delicious mix of all of them, and to think that you can somehow evade or deny this lesson, this cosmic fate, is not only charming and cute but also merely means that you've probably read one too many lopsided scientific studies and have chosen vacuity and blind faith over the raw meat of life.

But those scientists were right about one thing: Inform those teens. Arm them well. Teach them to respect the body and the flesh and learn its nerves and wires and bones and juices like it was a crazy road map to the stars. Try to minimize the harsher damage caused by sheer ignorance, misinformation, guilt.

But let's not mislead ourselves. Let's stop with the silly thinking that it's not supposed to be this way, that we're somehow supposed to traipse around in fresh white robes and lavender-scented air and mess-free innocence, hovering above all things awkward and painful and delicious and embodied and ever potentially catastrophic.

This is the greatest lesson of life, God, earth: Resistance is futile. All you can really do is grit your teeth, take a deep breath, unbutton your pants and smile.

Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate, and is frequently cross-posted to Huffington Post. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list, click here and remove three more.